


Heidenröslein

by scap3goat (kriegswaffel)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Pre-Slash, UST, mentioning of infidelity, mentioning of possible past dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriegswaffel/pseuds/scap3goat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will sinks deeper into Hannibal Lecter's psychological embrace - and might sink into something else as well. Something Hannibal can detect even with the help of his nose alone.<br/>(Up to 2x11, excluding the last two scenes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heidenröslein

**Author's Note:**

> My first Hannigram and my first Hannibal fic as well; my original bunnies were much darker and set during the first season, kind of what Will implies about Hannibal's previous interest in him.  
> Unbeta-ed.

“If you would julienne the carrot for me,” Hannibal asked in a leisurely tone, turning the cutting board with the carrots and knife towards Will.

For a moment Will stared at the carrot before him. “Do you name all the vegetables? To make them feel more like the main dish?”

Hannibal looked up from where he was expectedly slicing up the meat, a little confused at first, then let an eyebrow rise to show his understanding. “Julienne is not a name in this case. It’s a way of preparing mainly vegetables, cutting them into fine stripes.”

Before Will had really noticed Hannibal had slid around the corner, like a cat stalking its territory in the night, and placed himself behind Will.

“May I show you?”

Again, before Will could do any more than nod Hannibal had closed his hands around Will’s holding the knife and his other holding the carrot. He didn’t quite know why, but having Hannibal pressed against his back, armed with a large kitchen knife and his incredible strength, was both worrying and exhilarating.

“Like this,” Hannibal explained in a low voice while chopping off the ends of the carrot first and sectioning it off into equal parts. It was amazing how expertly he wielded the knife even through he had to maneuver Will’s hand and arm clinging to it, too.

Sometime during the first slicing of the first carrot section Will felt Hannibal moving closer, presumably to have a better look, but his breath brushing over Will’s ear was nevertheless distracting.

“Are you sniffing me?” the younger man asked dryly when he felt Hannibal’s chest expand against his back for far longer than an ordinary intake of breath would take.

A small chuckle and a sigh escaped Hannibal as he exhaled. “Why? Would you mind?”

“Just a bit creepy,” Will retorted, unable to withhold a bitter smile at the irony. The man had served him god knows who over the time they’d known each other and he should get creeped out over a little sniffing.

“Well,” Hannibal’s voice broke through his musings, “I cannot help but smell a distinct… change on you.” And before Will could ask he provided the answer as well, “Like a bud about to break open, the tender petals already unfurling from their tight coil, still surrounded by their green coat of armor but ready to spring open and reveal their optic as well as olfactory beauty to the world.”

Will’s head swam with the words Hannibal had all but whispered, breathed into his ear. There was a certain charm in them, he had to admit.

“You smell healthy, young and so full of potential,” Hannibal now positively aspirated and sent a shiver down Will’s spine.

Of course Will stamped down on that feeling, tilting his head to watch Hannibal carefully slice the slices again, creating long, thin carrot sticks. “I smelt sick at some point then, didn’t I?” he asked with a hint of a bite.

Again it was rewarded with a chuckle and Will knew he should feel patronized, condescended to.

“I could smell it on you, your encephalitis. It was so sweet, distracting almost.”

Will stiffened. “Like a flower? I’m relapsing?”

Hannibal carefully turned the knife in Will’s hand to shove the julienne away with the back of the knife to the board before turning to the next carrot section and before answering.

“No. You smelt like ripe fruit. Over ripe. The kind that is already swarming with drosophila.” Again, before Will could ask, Hannibal explained, “Fruit fly.”

“As obsessed as you were with me - if I’m the fruit, are you the fly?”

A chuckle at Will’s brashness, then a pause.

“Drosophila are an important part in research in the genetic field. They only have four chromosomes and their genes are easy to switch on and off. Yet these genes bear a remarkable likeness to human genes.”

“That doesn’t improve my opinion of fruit flies. And you haven’t answered my question,” Will replied stoically.

Hannibal seemed to think for a moment longer, formulating his answer carefully as he guided Will to slice more of the carrot.

What a fitting metaphor for their relationship, Will mused.

“I admit to enjoying the possibility to research you. In that regard I think myself different of the flies, I did not simply swarm you, I approached you, gauged you, made you my object of research, rather than be a tool of research myself. Mind you, it’s not like some people don’t want me to be, but unlike drosophila I have the power to shape my world.” It was almost like an afterthought. “Though, as much as I could fashion you to my liking, you were dangerously addicting even before that.”

Hannibal’s voice had hit that low note, that all-but-grumbling in his chest that reverberated through Will.

“So you made me fruit and fly,” Will said when he was certain Hannibal’s vibration wasn’t making his voice shake.

“You were so exquisit,” Hannibal remarked before emphasizing the statement by shoving off the second portion of julienned carrot, the steel making an alarming but almost melodic sound on the wooden board.

Will closed his eyes, trying to compose himself. “In what way? After all you’ve done, tasting that forbidden fruit…?”

“No,” was the simple answer.

“No? Come on, be honest. It’s not like I can run off and accuse you of anything. I wasn’t officially your patient, you’ll say you never knew of my illness so any consent I gave didn’t seem dubious to you.”

“Is that the splinter stuck under your nail, Will? The question whether I made you mine entirely?”

He couldn’t deny any longer that the way they were pressed together and how most of Hannibal’s words were whispered into his ear affected him in ways that somehow seemed even more wrong than the meal they were preparing.

“Well, it’d be nice to know if you set me up with Margot knowing whether it’d be worth her while or not,” Will replied as casually as he could under the circumstances, keeping his voice light and his eyes cast down on the poor, third carrot piece.

“I would not know what Margot Venger finds worth her while, not first hand.”

Will nodded slowly. “Or did you simply want to one-up Alana?”

There was a hum from Hannibal, low and melodic, contemplative and interested. “So, you being in the room with us every time is a platonic thing then?”

It took Will a moment to understand what Hannibal meant, his thoughts not aided by the fact that he could feel Hannibal’s nose in his hair and against the curve of his ear while the other turned the carrot slices and arranged them to cut them crosswise.

“I wouldn’t know if Alana really wanted it to be platonic.”

The comment was regarded with a chuckle, hot against Will’s ear. “I might be guilty of your presence as well,” Hannibal admitted, his voice going low again. “With her being so worried for your wellbeing, it’s so easy to relish in the knowledge of your slow blossoming, to feel the rush of anticipation of your upcoming undoing to bloom into your full potential.”

There was another curt, swishing sound of metal on wood and suddenly the heat of Hannibal’s hands was gone from Will’s, instead all but encircling his waist, followed by a long, deep inhale, Hannibal’s face nearly buried in Will’s neck.

“Goethe once wrote a poem, _Heidenröslein_ , about a boy, a young man, who finds a beautiful wild rose while wandering. At first he admires her only, then talks to her about breaking her off and she threatens to sting him. They then both do as they said, him breaking her, she stinging him, both suffering for his actions. You can imagine that interpretation varies from simple romantic love and heartbreak to more sexual themes - had she be she willing or not.”

Will nearly stopped breathing when Hannibal started to intone the poem, singing to a soft, almost melancholy melody.  
  
 _"Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn,_  
 _Röslein auf der Heiden,_  
 _War so jung und morgenschön,_  
 _Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn,_  
 _Sah's mit vielen Freuden._  
 _Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,_  
 _Röslein auf der Heiden."_

Silence reigned for a moment when Hannibal stopped after the first verse, his eyes closed.

“Do you intend to break me?” Will asked in a low voice, pointedly. “Or did you already? Am I your act of destruction as well as creation?”

Hannibal’s hands roamed his hips slightly, large palms and splayed fingers wide over his hips. “I would like to think that I unearthed you, to take with me, cherish and harbor in a safe place where no one else may come to break you.”

“Jack Crawford won’t look kindly on you stealing from his garden.”

Hannibal slowly spun Will around. “Jack Crawford doesn’t know weed from flower most times, let alone how to care for those he identifies correctly. Don’t you remember how he gave you over to my care, blinded by his arrogant self-importance. He could not see what I did because he blamed himself for what happened.”

Will kept staring into Hannibal’s eyes, almost glowing with the light falling on his face. Slowly Will’s hands came up to Hannibal’s arms when Hannibal’s hands wouldn’t stray from Will’s waist.

“Then maybe I should be glad I didn’t resist you potting me. Even though I’m not more than a trophy.”

Hannibal chuckled, leaning in closer, and Will’s eye involuntarily following Hannibal’s lips as he moved closer.

“You are so much more than a trophy,” whispered Hannibal, his lips so close to Will’s that he could feel the heat of Hannibal’s words like the ghost of a kiss. “And I intend to show you once your petals have finally unfurled.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have to admit, before watching 2x09 I watched "Hannibal Rising" and so the parallels in 2x09 cracked me up. That's also where Hannibal's singing comes from, I suppose. Basically ever dinner scene since 2x09 felt like a metaphor for them having sex to me.  
> Also, _[Heidenröslein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidenr%C3%B6slein)_ is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as mentioned by Hannibal. I take no credit for the text.


End file.
